


a cracked mask, late hangover, and a ragged suit

by levendis



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Bugs & Insects, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Graphic Description of Corpses, Homophobia, M/M, Necrophilia, Sexual Violence, Snuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 10:30:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19743871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: Hastur is a dedicated servant of Hell (and also a giant pile of maggots).





	a cracked mask, late hangover, and a ragged suit

**Author's Note:**

> I'd apologize but youse all keep making these nasty-ass demons out to be Cute and, well, spite is one of my primary motivators. Please double-check the tags and determine for yourself whether this is something you want to subject yourself to. Thank you, have a nice day

Hastur believes in the Cause, of course. He trusts Satan’s infernal vision, Beezelbub’s vile bureaucracy. He is the Duke of Hell, and he has his part to play in the eternal mechanisms of war.

So Armageddon approaches; if Hell needs more bodies and if there are quotas to be met, he will do it. If a privileged young man needs to turn his frustration into bigotry, he will use one of the shared accounts on the World Wide Web and encourage him to hate. If he must tempt a priest with the sins of the flesh, he will arrange it. If a guard must be made to watch as prisoners, who have done nothing wrong, die slowly from negligence and institutional cruelty, he’ll make a memo.

And if Beelzebub hands him a name, and says _you know what to do,_ he does. He knows what to do. He stares at himself in the mirror for a very long time, one of the nice ones in the lobby (Hell’s mirrors are cracked and dirty and will only ever show you the worst of yourself). He stares and he concentrates until the toad recedes; until the boils fade; even until his hair becomes less lank, and his eyes less black. A human’s version of normal, average, bordering on attractive. Certainly not ugly.

(There are more recently Fallen demons who are more naturally beautiful, a whole department dedicated to sensual and sexual temptations. But Beelzebub trusts _him_ , and he would never refuse.)

* * *

He stares at this version of himself, this nice and normal middle-aged man, and he sends the focus-grouped Grindr message to a particular politician. Poised for greatness, they say. And he would be - well, the projections say he’d be sort of average, in the grand Earthly scheme. But down in the trenches? Oh, the potential of this man.

So an hour later Hastur is in a Hackney hotel room, and he is being fucked. Two hours later he is still in the hotel room, and he is being murdered.

The politician, thirty something and wearing years of repression - a specific move by Leraje and an early nudge by Gaap - and anger, of course, that he built himself, that his parents gave to him, that his schoolyard friends shared with him, the impulse to hit the thing that is frightening him, hit it again and again and again - Hastur is gasping and crying and it’s a show of course but something about this is so very _nice_ \- to be brought down like this, used like this, snuffed out like this, and all in service of Armageddon. He smiles, he breathes the last breath he will take for some time,

And the politician’s soul was theirs.

* * *

Hastur plays dead for several days. He is dead in the hotel room in Hackney, listening as the politician cries and storms about and calls his secretary. He is dead as he is swabbed clean, as fingerprints are lifted, as alibis are made. He is dead when the housekeeper finds him, when the police arrive, when he is bagged and carried out. He is dead in the morgue, growing colder, bruising where the blood has settled. He is dead while another demon plays grieving widow, his body retrieved and sent to the funeral home. He is dead as they discuss options - cremation, embalming, caskets. He is dead as the fluids go in, as the makeup is applied, at the viewing where no one, aside from what hell provides, shows. He is dead in the cold hard ground, dirt piled high above him - the LARPing demons abscond and the cemetery sexton trundles away, one arm drifting a lit cigarette from the window of the cab of his backhoe.

* * *

(They fight, back and forth. Death is a big thing for both sides and there’s always something new about how to do it, how it comes, how it’s dealt with. Embalming was Hell’s idea, but built off of what Heaven gave; natural burials were Heaven’s idea, with enough pagan humanity in it that they couldn’t really lay claim. Humans, by and large, have a lot of sway over their grief. Not much of a home-field advantage for either team.)

* * *

Hastur is dead. He’s been dead for some time. And when enough time has passed, he exhales, and he _swarms_ -

He arrives back in Hell, maggots coalescing loosely into shape. He feels odd. Uncertain, almost. Unconvinced of himself. So much time exploring Earthly pleasures. Still bruised and bloated around the edges. The decay of him keenly felt.

“It’s a trip, isn’t it.” Ligur says, face impassive but the chameleon winking. “Being killed.”

Hastur nods. Ligur nods. The air is heavy and fetid and this isn’t charged so much as regretfully required. Ligur takes his hand, and tugs him into the nearest unused general-purpose room. He goes willingly, pliantly, bones moving easy and wetly in his body.

He’d almost felt, not peaceful, not ever that, but at rest. A job done, and done well, and being currently unneeded, simply a body at rest. He’d been down in the earth as he festered and rotted, as the worms came towards him. And he is a body in motion, now. He is himself and he is falling loose, into decay and sloughing skin, into the maggot-mass that he is, as Ligur presses against him.

* * *

“How did it feel?” Ligur asks. He licks down Hastur’s neck, curling into the open sores, tickling the worms that live there now.

“Beg pardon?”

“Being dead. Being killed. Being murdered, in an act of passion.” Ligur’s hand between his legs, pulling the fly down and slipping into the swarm of him. The wet, crawling mass, enveloping Ligur’s fingers.

The frog croaks and the lizard winks and Hastur gasps and Ligur quirks an eyebrow - and Hastur bursts open, the fetid rush of him spilling out, the fluid and the flies and the worms and the maggots and the dirt, too, the grave-earth, the soil of humanity and that hits something, that nags at something, he’s become something _else_ -

He chokes on whatever’s left in his stomach, as it comes up. Leaves it cool and drying on his lips, the stench of it. He can’t tell what he feels other than awful.

“I was the same, my first time. The way humans murder. Different, from discorporation. Easier and less, okay, you get less _dead_ , but there’s something. Huh.” Ligur steps back, lights a cigarette that he’s waved into existence. “Makes you realize why the Department of Bodily Violence and the Sensual Temptation folks talk to each other so much.”

Hastur cannot nod, because Hastur is now a reasonably-sized pile of maggots writhing about on the linoleum. The computer in the corner showing a bouncing screensaver logo that will never, ever hit the corner.

Ligur coughs up something approximating a laugh, and ashes the cigarette into the center of him, stepping neatly over, letting the door close just a touch too loudly.

* * *

Hastur believes in the Cause, of course he does. This is what he’s been built to do. He stares in the mirror, one of the ones in the lobby because they’re almost honest: stares at himself until the maggots form features and the features form a face, until he has hair, and black eyes, and festering sores. He is the Duke of Hell, and he will play his part as Earth quakes and the stars align. He is, as the kids say, groovy with it.

He steps out into a busy SoHo street, with a name in his hand and a grin on his face. The mechanism ticks over, and he flags a cab, body shifting into place. He knows what to do.


End file.
